Fictional Friction

by Damon Suede

All stories require friction. It’s the
core of every character, every plot, every spectacle… Even the
sweetest, softest saga involves heat generated between opposing
forces rubbing together and changed thereby.

Friction occurs whenever two separate
things or people or ideas push against each other. Friction
energizes us and gets our attention. Characters, situations, and
ideas interest us because of the conflict between what we believe
and what we learn from encountering unexpected stimuli. Too extreme
a disparity produces discomfort, but the right balance of surprise
and expectation can be delicious. Friction is active. Friction is
primitive. Friction is physical. Friction is sensory and sensual.

Friction is the reason sex feels good.

Now… writers often hear about the
necessity of conflict.
After all, struggle both internal and external remains the root of
all drama. Unfortunately in romance writing, obsessing about
conflict can lead to monotonous, silly choices. The word conflict
gets authors into all sorts of trouble. Have you ever read a story
which forces lovers to bicker incessantly or deploys violence as a
flashy garnish? Often these books take “conflict” to mean literal
combat. In dramatic terms, fighting is the most literal and least
interesting form of conflict. This is the kind of porno-logic we
learn from the worst of Hollywood;
if one bomb is good, two must be better. Violent spectacle or
couples who badger each other in an infinite loop of malcontent can
be about as romantic as toenail clippings. Demanding conflict makes
writers think that the only way to build stakes is to have people
fighting and biting and dying in bushels.

Tension actually offers safer verbal turf for
writers, except tension can devolve into stasis. Finding drama by
hunting for “tension” sometimes leads to characters locked in
disagreement or frozen situations in a kind of blank plateau that is
anything but entertaining or romantic. Overreliance on tension can
generate a strange paralysis that is neither engaging nor
interesting. Have you ever gotten frustrated with characters stuck
in a ruts, unable to communicate and unwilling to change? Feisty
protagonists have a hard time battling restrictions if they are so
neurotic they can’t take a single step. Goodbye romance, hello
naptime. Characters must grow, events must have meaningful impact,
and Happy Endings should be anything but
tense.

Readers seek out interesting friction and
writers thrive on it. As E.M. Forster once observed, "’The king died
and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died and then the
queen died of grief’" is a plot.” I’d argue that the element that
separates these two sentences is friction. In the second
sentence, “grief” alters the Queen’s stasis via emotional abrasion…
Whether by internal distress or external failure, the friction
between her past and present literally scours this royal widow until
nothing but death is left to her.
Friction creates Forster’s
much-vaunted plot.

Friction produces pearls
and tsunamis; the bit of grit that itches the oyster can be every
bit as dramatic as a tectonic shift causing a tidal wave. Unlike the
potentially mindless “conflict” or frozen “tension,” friction can be
as small as a grain of sand or as literally catastrophic as the
earth moving.

So, where’s the rub?

Romance,
more than any other genre, traces and retraces the issues of
connection between
separated elements, the tension created by division, the mortal
conflict between irreconcilable beliefs, desires, or temperaments.
Conflict ceases, tension releases, but romance’s ubiquitous Happy
Ending does not end the friction as much as allow it to burst into beautiful flame.

Friction. Tension. Conflict. Notice any
overlap? They are all about the unique relationship between two or
more things. Even internal conflict, individual tension, mental
friction express a line stretched between different ideas or
emotions. That connection can only be maintained as long as the
surfaces stay close enough to touch without being combined. Like
romance, friction generates energy through proximity and
separation, connecting distinct participants and then bringing them
together in heated exchanges.

Whether I’m writing a sex scene, a tender
disclosure, or an internal monologue, I always start from the
point of friction. In each moment, I look for the points of contact
where the differences rub together and generate the most warmth and
interest. By finding the friction, I can get at the spark of the
scene and nurture it. If I manage to do my job properly, that
glimmer will light something in my readers as well. It is that
distinctive heat that characterizes romance fiction for me. Worlds
colliding, opposites attracting, sparks flying, the loin and the
limb…

Friction requires action. As a model for writers,
romantic friction works on another level too: friction cannot happen
without motion and relationship between two participants. Frankly,
friction in fiction operates exactly as it does in intimacy… as a
shifting dynamic interaction of differing things, as rough, soft,
fast, slow, cruel, gentle as necessary… but never inert. As
such, friction offers romance writers a rubric to draft and revise
any scene… Find the points of
contact that make things happen. Instead of manufacturing
conflict or worrying about tension, see if you can identify sources
of friction, the relationship and distinctions that evoke dynamic
events, internal or external.

Friction generates heat! Do you ever worry about
sexiness, or subtlety or specificity?
Investigate the power sources
in your projects. In concrete terms heat marks the resistance
between molecules moving at different speeds as they skid against
each other. What we think of as warmth is caused when those
fast-moving molecules skid against slower (cooler) molecules. Every
energy source we use harvests the force of resistance, from
windmills to combustion engines. Harnessing friction gives us the
power to change and direct our writing. Friction can and should
inform dialogue, thought, settings, events, and physical intimacy.

Friction causes change. By definition, friction
wears away at surfaces, so in order to maintain the abrasion between
characters or ideas, new grit and new pressure must be introduced.
Stakes must escalate or the heat generated will peter out.
Trace the ways friction
transforms each moment. Again, focus on friction serves us well
as we identify potential escalations and their relative impact.
Change is what makes situations interesting, keeps us reading and
prevents genre from becoming generic. Understanding and directing
friction allows writers to take risks and challenge expectations.